According to some sources, attendance was up at Historicon. By the same token, the amount of dealers seemed to be way down. Who knows? But in the gaming areas, (which everyone said, seemed strangely vacant-the claim was that everything was spread out) the thing that impressed me most was the quality of the gaming tables. The gaming surfaces were fantastic-some had even been hauled from the vast Midwest-and this stuff was big!

Here's the background. It all began with Geo-Hex and the Micro armor guys. Geo-Hex showed everyone that nice terrain wasn't just for museum displays and then Micro showed everyone you could easily make it! Both used the idea of large and small hexes of rigid styrofoam-this was a revolution of terrain for gamers. I have to admit I tend to look down on gaming tables that are primitive. Would YOU put your figures on a green-painted table? There almost should be a terrain competition-some of it is getting excessive.

My favorite was an ACW small table (6X20) made of the 4 inch styro-hexes -each piece rounded and terrained so as to be a perfect exhibit by itself. There was also another (6x60) ACW that I gave a 99%. Some of this stuff is better than any professional architectual display I've ever seen.

I also saw a traveling version of a game surface with a rim of hinged 2x4s raised about 1 inch so people can't knock stuff off the table; a nice idea and it also gives you an elbow rest. For me, the terrain was positively the best feature. The convention as a whole seemed a bit lackluster this year. Maybe, as many suggested, the recent (even TV advertised) Origins sucked up a lot of gamers and their cash. Historicon also continued its lack of promotion for the lecture series-lectures which should really be made up into booklets and sold. (Our group always give at least one lecture related to tactics at Cold Wars and Historicon.)

One of my readers sent me an update on perhaps the best computer game ever--the Universal Military Simulator (UMS). The game featured black & white wire frame units on a 3-D grid, everything could be rotated, units could be adjusted and added to armies for various eras, sound effects, etc. It was a neat game, one of the classics. Well, it's coming back. Somewhere in Beta Testingland it resides as the WAR COLLEGE, slated for release as a CD game for the PC. The reports say the new game contains all the old features, but they're now solid and in color. Units will be rendered in three different scales. At the closest scale you can give orders to individual units and deploy them in any historical formation.

Clicking on a box gives you all the info you need: morale, efficiency, ammo, casualties-anything you could want. They will have 5 pre-loaded scenarios, including a Napoleonic-Austerlitz one, expansion CDs are planned but the ability to do battles between custom armies should be retained. A classic re- turns!

Cavalry carbines

Here's a wargame problem. What did those guys with the carbines slung at their sides do with them? Well, we know that it's really great fun to bang away at each other with the knowledge that you probably won't be hit. Iean has data that shows how bad not only the ahit" rate was, but how high the rate of misfires was. By the 1650s a standard cavalry technique was to hold the carbine-sized pistols sideways so that the powder wouldn't leak or fly from the pan. I've experimented with flintlocks and seen the problems firsthand--think of these on horseback or charging at 30 mph- ewwwwww! The conclusion is that even when data shows that skirmishing occurred between light horse probably most frequently dueling muskets had more of a psychological effect than a physical one.

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